


CASTIEL

by Cerdic519



Series: Six 'Birthdays' [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's Birthday, Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Other, September 18th, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 17:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8066884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: In honor of our perfect angel, eight things that happened on September 18th throughout the centuries:





	

1.  
96 AD: Emperor Domitian is assassinated (Roman emperors did not tend to last) at the age of forty-four. The younger son of Emperor Vespasian, he had succeeded his elder brother Titus fifteen years earlier and had seen himself as a benevolent tyrant; those he ruled tended to leave off the 'benevolent' bit. The assassins, a pair of court officials, take the precaution of removing the sword the emperor had kept under his pillow, and before the day was out have replaced Domitian with the sixty-five-year-old Nerva.

2.  
1066: King Harold III of Norway (Harold Harefoot, because he was a fast runner) invades England to seize the throne, landing at Scarborough. His invasion will end along with his life some seven days later at the Battle of Stamford Bridge when his army is routed by Harold II of England, but the latter will soon after make the mistake of engaging his other invader, William II of Normandy, before reinforcements can come up. The Witan (English parliament) briefly declare young Edgar Cerdicing as King Edgar II, but fold faster than a deck-chair when William lays waste to the countryside as he marches on London.

3.  
1714: George Louis, Elector of Hanover in north-west Germany since 1698, arrives in Great Britain to become King George I (his mother Sophia had been a grand-daughter of King James I, 1603-1625, and had only missed out on the throne herself by a few weeks, dying aged 84). George's wife Sophia Dorothea stayed in his native Hanover under house-arrest; he was keeping her imprisoned there after she had had an affair (his servants later admitted to having killed her lover). She spent the last three decades of her life under house-arrest while George brought his two mistresses to England; the English called Sophia von Kielmansegg (who may have been George's half-sister!) 'the Elephant' and Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg 'the Maypole'.

4.  
1793: Twelve years after winning a fight for independence from George I's great-grandson of the same name, President George Washington lays the cornerstone for the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Twenty-one years later it was burnt down by the British during the War of 1812, but was rebuilt between 1815 and 1826. 

5.  
1850: The 'Bloodhound Law' (officially the Fugitive Slave Act) is enacted in the USA, as part of an attempt at compromise between slavery and free states. It forces Northerners to participate in the return of captured slaves to their owners, but is ultimately counter-productive as it drives many who might have stood by to come out against the trade. It also leads to a surge in slaves escaping instead to British Canada.

6.  
1931: The Japanese Army stage the Mukden Incident at, oddly enough, Mukden (now Shenyang, China). A dynamite explosion on a railway line running through Japanese Manchuria is so weak that a train passes safely over it minutes later, but the 'attack' gives the Japanese a pretext for taking over all Manchuria and setting up a puppet-state, then withdrawing from the League of Nations when told to give it back. This was, in effect, the first act of World War Two.

7.  
1977: Voyager I takes the first picture of Earth and Moon together. Launched thirteen days before, it visited Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980), and departed the Solar System for interstellar space in 2012. It is now the furthest man-made object from Earth.

8.  
2008: The global financial system comes close to collapse as the financial crisis reaches its height. Top of the US charts is Chris Brown with 'Forever'. 'Devil Bones' by Kathy Reichs had just replaced Sean Williams' 'The Force Unleashed' atop the New York Times Bestseller list (worryingly it itself was replaced the following week by Christine Feehan's 'Dark Curse'!). The Chevrolet Impala is the eighth-best bestselling car in the USA, albeit a long way behind the leading Ford F-Series. And a radio advertising salesman acting as a vessel for an angel walks into a barn and gets shot at by a hunter whom only recently the angel was gripping tight to raise him from perdition.


End file.
